The present invention relates to a system and method for transmitting data to a company""s data system by a mobile station linked to a mobile communications network, and for receiving from the company""s data system acknowledgment to the same mobile station.
A mobile station can be used for data transmission by connecting it, for example, to a portable computer and by using therein a modem which complies with the mobile station in question. Then a first connection is established to the modem pool of a receiving data system, and there after data is transmitted once the connection has been made. Another possibility, especially in a GSM system, is to send data as a short message or SMS-message. On the other hand, there exists services based on A-subscriber identifying and number conversion in the intelligent network centre, which make it possible to make a call from mobile stations to extension numbers of a company""s local area network by using just the extension number as the dialing number.
A drawback of the above mentioned transmission modes of mobile data is, that if a modem transmission is used, it takes tens of seconds to establish a connection, data transmission can begin only there after. The modems required are also fairly expensive. However, a problem with short message is that transmission thereof by the mobile station is quite complicated and at the receiving side there are no direct interfaces to the data systems.
The main objective of the present invention is to eliminate the drawbacks and disadvantages mentioned above, and to enable a new type of system and method for transmitting data and for receiving acknowledgment. This objective has been achieved by the type of the system and method mentioned in the beginning, the characteristic features thereof are disclosed in the accompanying claims.
According to the present invention, a mobile station transmits data as coded directly to a target number of a company""s data system. The caller""s number (A-identity, in the case of a mobile station subscriber IMSI or the international mobile subscriber identity) and the target number dialed by the caller (B number) together decide what function follows from the contact. A suffix of the numeric sequence is converted to data using an intelligent, programmable server connected to the telephone network. Caller identification is used to restrict mobile stations accessing within the service. The restriction is effected by the intelligent network centre. The data and A-number associated therein are transmitted from the server to the customer""s data system by using a data network connection. A voice message or, in the case of GSM-mobile phone, a short message service (SMS) is used to acknowledge message arrival and a real time transmission of a return message directly from the customer""s data system back to the same mobile phone, which sent the data code.
As an advantages of the invention can be mentioned, that the entire code transmission-return message is in real time and the entire process chain using a GSM mobile phone takes only around some ten seconds. The mobile phone requires no ancillary equipment to make the data transmission possible.